MSRP:

$1399

Overall Rating: 7.24

Very well laid out design. We were confused by the service plan when compared with the warranty since you would pay quite a bit for just a longer labor portion to the warranty.

General Information

This brand was started by the person that originally came up with the idea of aggressively selling fitness products on the Internet. He wasn't the first one to think of doing this, but obviously had the best idea and quickly turned Smooth Fitness into the biggest seller of what is called "specialty" quality equipment on the web. After a difference of opinion on the direction the company should take, he parted ways with Smooth and has now launched the brand Yowza fitness. Using the same manufacturing company that was used at Smooth, the quality looks like it was carried over too. We thought the name was quirky and found that it is a northeastern colloquialism that means "something great" or being "greatly excited by something." Unfortunately, it is also a southern colloquialism that was used in the blackface comedies of the Jim Crow era as slang for "yes sir" and is considered racist by many.

Quality / Philosophy

As many specialty brands, the focus is to make the machines feature rich. Plenty of programming, features, and quality seem to be the direction that Yowza is trying to head. It appears to be approaching things with the original strategy that Smooth used for years which would make sense with plenty of advertising and a big push on the web.

Outlook

It will be interesting to see. The company is spending plenty of money on advertising on the Internet. We know how expensive it is to bid high on many of the terms they are using in the world of paid advertising on the web with companies like Google. The product is quality and the name choice is unfortunate but since the leadership of this company is not a stranger to this business, we would expect to see him gain a foothold on the net.